New Play Society

The New Play Society was founded by Dora Mavor Moore in Toronto in 1946. The company's first season was staged at the Royal Ontario Museum and included Synge's Playboy of the Western World, Strindberg's The Father, Maugham's The Circle and O'Neill's Ah! Wilderness. By the 1949-50 season, however, five of the company's nine productions were Canadian. In 1956, the company extended to include a school. But by 1960, the company was relying on virtually one production to assure its survival: Spring Thaw, an annual comedy revue that always did well. In 1971, a quarter-century after its foundation, the company's charter was laid to rest.